Ethical, Legal, Social and Practical Barriers to Sharing Between Biobanks in Europe

In the last two decades, important efforts have been made to organize such biological samples such as tissues, blood, DNA, and cells and to organize data into biobanks in order to make these samples and data available for sharing between researchers. That being said, there remains many barriers and challenges to sharing between researchers and biobanks (whether regionally, nationally or internationally). The overall objective of this research project is to obtain a better definition and understanding of the ethical, legal, social and practical problems preventing the sharing of data and/or samples between biobanks, as well as between researchers, and to suggest ethically sound (i.e. just) solutions that are feasible in practice.